A limited constitutional government calls for a rules-based, freemarket monetary system, not the topsy-turvy fiat dollar that now exists under central banking. This issue of the Cato Journal examines the case for alternatives to central banking and the reforms needed to move toward free-market money.

The more widespread use of body cameras will make it easier for the American public to better understand how police officers do their jobs and under what circumstances they feel that it is necessary to resort to deadly force.

Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it? In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects.

The Cato Institute has released its 2014 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. “Libertarianism is not just a framework for utopia,” Cato’s David Boaz writes in his book, The Libertarian Mind. “It is the indispensable framework for the future.” And as the new report demonstrates, the Cato Institute, thanks largely to the generosity of our Sponsors, is leading the charge to apply this framework across the policy spectrum.

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Forget Freedom. The UK Poll Is All About ‘Fairness’

Britain may have given the world freedom as we understand it (see The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns by Benjamin Constant), but you would not know it from the last prime ministerial debate that took place last Thursday. The candidates (Conservative David Cameron, Labour’s Gordon Brown and Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg) used the word “freedom” only 2 times. They said the word “free” 5 times, but all in the context of the supposedly “free” goodies, which they promised to lavish on the electorate. Words “responsible” and “responsibility” fared somewhat better (4 times). But the winning words were “fair” and “fairness” that were mentioned 22 times – almost always in connection with taxing the rich. Here is a typical example:

Brown: “But I come back to the central question about fairness that has been raised by our questioner. How can David [Cameron] possibly justify an inheritance tax cut for millionaires at a time when he wants to cut Child Tax Credits? Let’s be honest. The inheritance tax threshold for couples is £650,000, if your house is worth less than that you pay no inheritance tax. What David [Cameron] is doing is giving 3,000 people, the richest people in the country, he’s going to give them £200,000 each a year. That is simply unfair.”

It was Gordon Brown, the current Prime Minister, who increased the top rate of income tax to 50%. Neither Clegg nor the supposedly business-friendly Cameron have proposed to cut that rate. Indeed, “fairness” in British politics seems to amount to little more than taxing the most productive members of society “until the pipes squeak.” Those words were uttered by Denis Healy who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1970s. It was under his leadership that the UK ran out of money and had to borrow billions from the IMF. It turns out that when you tax the rich too much, they will work less or leave for a more hospitable jurisdiction. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan understood it. Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Brown do not.